Quotes and anectdotes from the wise to the foolish, and the courageous to the drunk

Authors by Name: W

Richard Wagner (3)

Imagination creates reality.

George Wald (2)

All War Departments are now Defense Departments. This is all part of the doubletalk of our time. The aggressor is always on the other side.

Margaret Walker (3)

The Word of fire burns today On the lips of our prophets in an evil age.

Henry A. Wallace (3)

It has been claimed at times that our modern age of technology facilitates dictatorship.

Alfred Russel Wallace (3)

In my solitude I have pondered much on the incomprehensible subjects of space, eternity, life and death.

Hugh Walpole (2)

Happiness comes from... some curious adjustment to life.

Izaak Walton (4)

I have laid aside business, and gone a'fishing.

An Wang (3)

You have to have your heart in the business and the business in your heart.

Mary Augusta Ward (3)

For after my marriage I had made various attempts to write fiction. They were clearly failures.

William Arthur Ward (14)

It is wise to direct your anger towards problems - not people to focus your energies on answers - not excuses.

Andy Warhol (18)

An artist is somebody who produces things that people don't need to have.

Charles Dudley Warner (5)

What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in it.

Robert Penn Warren (2)

How do poems grow? They grow out of your life.

Earl Warren (6)

All provisions of federal, state or local law requiring or permitting discrimination in public education must yield.

George Washington (30)

Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation for it is better to be alone than in bad company.

Martha Washington (2)

I've learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances.

Booker T. Washington (10)

Associate yourself with people of good quality, for it is better to be alone than in bad company.

Ethel Waters (4)

Elia Kazan understood my problems. He was able to bring out the very best in me. He gave me credit for my intelligence.

Thomas J. Watson (6)

Design must reflect the practical and aesthetic in business but above all... good design must primarily serve people.

Isaac Watts (3)

I would not change my blest estate for all the world calls good or great.

Alan Watts (16)

And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on.

Evelyn Waugh (3)

Other nations use 'force' we Britons alone use 'Might'.

John Wayne (4)

Courage is being scared to death... and saddling up anyway.

Mary Webb (2)

Saddle your dreams before you ride em.

Daniel Webster (12)

Keep cool anger is not an argument.

John Webster (3)

Eagles commonly fly alone. They are crows, daws, and starlings that flock together.

Simone Weil (25)

Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication.

Adam Weishaupt (2)

When man lives under government, he is fallen, his worth is gone, and his nature tarnished.

Lawrence Welk (9)

By 1969, when I celebrated 45 years in the music business, I also had 45 people in our musical family.

Orson Welles (15)

The enemy of society is middle class and the enemy of life is middle age.

H. G. Wells (19)

Beauty is in the heart of the beholder.

Rebecca West (11)

Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.

Mae West (31)

Love isn't an emotion or an instinct - it's an art.

Edith Wharton (6)

Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe, old age flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.

Richard Whately (5)

A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor's.

Benjamin Whichcote (2)

Fear is the denomination of the Old Testament belief is the denomination of the New.

Ellen G. White (3)

The words of the Bible, and the Bible alone, should be heard from the pulpit.

William Allen White (3)

A little learning is not a dangerous thing to one who does not mistake it for a great deal.

Theodore White (5)

Power in America today is control of the means of communication.

E. B. White (19)

Old age is a special problem for me because I've never been able to shed the mental image I have of myself - a lad of about 19.

George Whitefield (5)

Nothing is more generally known than our duties which belong to Christianity and yet, how amazing is it, nothing is less practiced?

Alfred North Whitehead (19)

Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.

Walt Whitman (30)

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.

John Greenleaf Whittier (7)

Beauty seen is never lost, God's colors all are fast.

Charlotte Whitton (3)

Man cannot live by incompetence alone.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (6)

So many gods, so many creeds, so many paths that wind and wind while just the art of being kind is all the sad world needs.

Oscar Wilde (100)

No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.

Laura Ingalls Wilder (2)

Every job is good if you do your best and work hard. A man who works hard stinks only to the ones that have nothing to do but smell.

Thornton Wilder (12)

The more decisions that you are forced to make alone, the more you are aware of your freedom to choose.

Tennessee Williams (17)

We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.

Wendell Willkie (2)

Education is the mother of leadership.

William John Wills (2)

We have this morning dropped anchor, just off Williamstown.

Edmund Wilson (2)

The human imagination has already come to conceive the possibility of recreating human society.

Tom Wilson (5)

Wisdom doesn't necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up all by itself.

Flip Wilson (7)

I think Mr. Wilson will have to be the rest of the way alone.

Harold Wilson (3)

He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.

Samuel Wilson (3)

The infrastructure for linking environmental health and public health is not working as well as it should.

Woodrow Wilson (19)

If you want to make enemies, try to change something.

Walter Winchell (3)

Gossip is the art of saying nothing in a way that leaves practically nothing unsaid.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (9)

The human body is the best picture of the human soul.

P. G. Wodehouse (3)

Memories are like mulligatawny soup in a cheap restaurant. It is best not to stir them.

Thomas Wolfe (4)

Culture is the arts elevated to a set of beliefs.

Mary Wollstonecraft (6)

The divine right of husbands, like the divine right of kings, may, it is hoped, in this enlightened age, be contested without danger.

Natalie Wood (4)

I couldn't even go to the bathroom alone. My mother or a social worker always went with me.

George Edward Woodberry (2)

Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.

Victoria Woodhull (3)

I shall not change my course because those who assume to be better than I desire it.

Carter G. Woodson (6)

The mere imparting of information is not education.

Virginia Woolf (30)

It seems as if an age of genius must be succeeded by an age of endeavour riot and extravagance by cleanliness and hard work.

William Wordsworth (21)

But an old age serene and bright, and lovely as a Lapland night, shall lead thee to thy grave.

Frank Lloyd Wright (26)

A man is a fool if he drinks before he reaches the age of 50, and a fool if he doesn't afterward.

Wilbur Wright (2)

It is possible to fly without motors, but not without knowledge and skill.

Frances Wright (5)

Equality is the soul of liberty there is, in fact, no liberty without it.

Orville Wright (2)

In just six weeks from the time the design was started, we had the motor on the block testing its power.

William Wycherley (3)

Wit is more necessary than beauty and I think no young woman ugly that has it, and no handsome woman agreeable without it.

Elinor Wylie (2)

In masks outrageous and austere, The years go by in single file But none has merited my fear, And none has quite escaped my smile.

Tammy Wynette (2)

Sometimes it's hard to be a woman giving all your love to just one man.